Chap­ter XI titled “How Lazaro Left for His Home­land and What Hap­pened to Him on the Way” begins with a twist of fate that brings Lazaro face-to-face with a man from his trou­bled past. In the crowd­ed streets of Madrid, he spots the squire who once deceived him and stole his clothes. Lazaro does not con­front him direct­ly. Instead, he clev­er­ly stirs the resent­ment of a local fam­i­ly who had also been wronged by the same man. Fueled by his provo­ca­tion, they con­front the squire, beat him sound­ly, and hand him over to the author­i­ties. As the man is tak­en away, believ­ing the attack was led by Lazaro’s kin, Lazaro slips away, decid­ing it is time to aban­don his life in Madrid and the mis­eries it held.

His depar­ture is not with­out reflec­tion. Madrid, though vast and bustling, had offered him lit­tle beyond hunger and humil­i­a­tion. The beat­ings he endured had left him frail, forc­ing him to rely on the char­i­ty of strangers just to sur­vive. He remem­bers over­hear­ing beg­gars whis­per­ing about the squire’s fate—a tri­al, a con­vic­tion, and a final sen­tence of ban­ish­ment for vagrancy. The news brings Lazaro no joy, only a lin­ger­ing unease. He fears that oth­ers involved in their past decep­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly the infa­mous trunk inci­dent, might seek vengeance. To pro­tect him­self, he alters his appear­ance and leaves the city with haste, not stop­ping until the sky­line of the Esco­r­i­al comes into view. The sight of the grand, unfin­ished monastery brings him a strange com­fort, not just for its beau­ty, but for its iso­la­tion and the promise of clean­er air and clear­er thought.

Con­tin­u­ing his jour­ney, Lazaro encoun­ters a camp of gyp­sies. Cov­ered in dust and ragged from trav­el, he is mis­tak­en for one of their own and is invit­ed to join their meal. At first wary, he accepts and soon begins to tell them sto­ries from his life, draw­ing laugh­ter from their gath­er­ing. His tale of the mis­ad­ven­tures in the Madrid inn, par­tic­u­lar­ly the com­i­cal moment involv­ing the bar­rel, enter­tains them the most. It is then that two gypsies—one a man, the oth­er a woman—reveal they were present in the very sto­ry he tells. The man, once a priest, and the woman, for­mer­ly a maid­en from Madrid, con­firm their iden­ti­ties, sur­pris­ing Lazaro with the unex­pect­ed reunion. Their laugh­ter turns to shared rec­ol­lec­tion, and soon the woman begins to recount the events from her point of view.

She describes how, after the inci­dent at the inn, both she and the priest were cap­tured and impris­oned. How­ev­er, through clever manip­u­la­tion and feigned repen­tance, they man­aged to escape. They fled under cov­er of dark­ness, steal­ing gar­ments along the way to mask their iden­ti­ties. The priest shaved his head, adopt­ing the look of a gyp­sy, while the maid­en dark­ened her skin with crushed herbs and ash. The gyp­sy camp had tak­en them in with­out ques­tion, drawn to their charm and sto­ries. Now ful­ly inte­grat­ed into the group, they live with­out fear of arrest or expo­sure. Lazaro lis­tens with mixed feelings—part amuse­ment, part envy—at how oth­ers, too, have used dis­guise and quick think­ing to slip past pun­ish­ment.

As night falls, Lazaro finds him­self reflect­ing on how lives like theirs—improvised and precarious—still find a way to con­tin­ue. He is remind­ed that iden­ti­ty, like rep­u­ta­tion, is often just a cos­tume worn for the day. The priest and maid­en now live free, their pasts erased by dust and dis­tance. Lazaro does not judge them. Instead, he sees a reflec­tion of his own journey—one filled with false starts, masked inten­tions, and an end­less search for com­fort in a world that rarely offers it will­ing­ly. The gyp­sies are not saints, nor are they vil­lains. They are sur­vivors, much like him­self, and their stories—wild as they are—help him feel a lit­tle less alone in his path.

This chap­ter not only adds anoth­er col­or­ful episode to Lazaro’s adven­tures but also deep­ens the theme of rein­ven­tion. Whether through choice or neces­si­ty, peo­ple reshape them­selves to fit the demands of each moment. For Lazaro, the road to Tejares is no longer just a return home. It becomes a pas­sage through the shared absur­di­ties of life, where every trav­el­er car­ries a secret and every encounter could shift the sto­ry. He con­tin­ues not because he knows what lies ahead, but because the only way to live is to keep walk­ing, even when the map is unclear.